CPBB's "New Wave" of Municipal Fiscal Stewardship Sweeps Coast to Coast

National, state and local government fiscal challenges have been highlighted in the media for several years now. Since the 2008 recession, we've seen unprecedented fiscal challenges, including municipal bankruptcy, strike public institutions across the country. Local government's have attempted to address these fiscal emergencies in a variety of different ways, without much success. As the Volcker-Ravitch report recently concluded, "states and cities have deep structural problems that will not go away just because the country is coming out of the recession that started in 2008."

The Center for Priority Based Budgeting (CPBB) has been on the cutting edge in assisting local governments to navigate their way through significant fiscal challenges. As we stated in a recent CPBB article The New Wave - A Paradigm Shift in Municipal Financial Stewardship, "a key component of the paradigm shift is changing the way that resource allocation discussions take place. Financial problems are also effectively hidden and obscured because the budget process allows for it. Line item budgeting, incremental budgeting, zero-based budgeting were each attempts to better understand "how" money is spent, but these methods fail to address a more fundamental question:"why" money is spent."

Priority Based Budgeting (PBB) provides a scalable, replicable and comprehensive review of the entire organization, identifying every program offered, identifying the costs of every program offered, evaluating the relevance of every program offered on the basis of the community's priorities, and ultimately guiding elected and appointed officials to the policy questions they can answer with the information gained from the Priority Based Budgeting process, such as:

• What is the local government uniquely qualified to provide, offering the maximum benefit to citizens for the tax dollars they pay?
• What is the community truly mandated to provide? What does it cost to fulfill those mandates?
• What programs are most appropriate to fund by establishing or increasing user-fees?
• What programs are most appropriate for establishing partnerships with other community service providers?
• What services might the local government consider “getting out of the business” of providing?
• Where are there apparent overlaps and redundancies in a community because several entities are providing similar services?
• Where is the local government potentially competing against private businesses within its own community?

Priority Based Budgeting has now been successfully implemented in over 60 local government communities coast-to-coast. We take pride in our partnership with these CPBB communities in an effort to improve a community's fiscal health for the benefit of the entire community. The City of Boulder, Colorado recently unveiled their 2014 budget using PBB for the 4th year in a row. As the Boulder 2014 Budget Policy Document states, "Now integrated into its fourth consecutive year of budget develepmont, Priority Based Budgeting (PBB) is the framework within which all budget decisions are made."

CPBB Local Government Partners by State

The core CPBB concepts of Fiscal Health and Wellness through Priority Based Budgeting are truly inspiring a new wave of municipal fiscal stewardship. A complete revolution in how local governments utilize their limited resources to the benefit of the communities they serve. Recently, communities as economically and geographically varied as the City of Branson, Missouri, Scott County, Minnesota, the City of Hermosa Beach, California, Cobb County, Georgia and San Juan County, New Mexico have chosen priority based budgeting to fundamentally change their approach to fiscal stewardship.  

This "New Wave," the fundamental paradigm shift in municipal financial stewardship, must be accepted if local governments are to be financially viable and able to create the types of communities their citizens are proud to call home.

Local government communities must consider a completely different perspective. In order to achieve success and accept the challenges that are ahead, we must see more clearly how to manage, use, and optimize resources in a much different way than has been done in the past. This new environment demands a new (economic) vision of the future.  

Related Articles:  

Strong Municipal Bond Ratings Propelled by Priority Based Budgeting

Innovations in Financial Modeling and Forecasting

"Moneyball" for Local Government - The CPBB Video Espresso Blast

Keep an eye on the CPBB blog for further updates. Sign-up for our social media pages so you stay connected with TEAM CPBB!

If you're thinking of jumping into the world of Fiscal Health and Wellness through Priority Based Budgeting we would certainly like to be part of your efforts! Contact us to schedule a free webinar and identify the best CPBB service option(s) to meet your organization's particular needs.

 

"DATA VISUALIZATION" for Local Government